“Did that sound like a joke to you?”
Gyo-eon only doubled down, and Hae-yul had no choice but to shake his head. Conversations with Gyo-eon seemed to flow normally on the surface, and then every so often the frequencies fell out of sync like this.
“Let’s just eat.”
Hae-yul said with a sigh and was about to pick up his chopsticks first when he glanced sideways at Gyo-eon at the last moment. Gyo-eon sent him a puzzled look in return.
“……Aren’t you eating?”
Whether the question sounded strange to him or not, Gyo-eon stared at Hae-yul with an odd expression.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Is this the first time you’ve seen someone observe the courtesy of elders first?”
“……Why are you observing that courtesy in front of me?”
“Because you’re older than me?”
Gyo-eon openly suppressed a baffled laugh in front of Hae-yul. He stared at him blankly for a moment as if words had failed him, then finally opened his mouth.
“From now on, in this house, let’s treat that courtesy as a non-existent concept. What I mean is — Ju Hae-yul has no reason to follow it.”
“What? Why?”
Instead of answering, Gyo-eon gestured with his eyes to signal him to eat. Hae-yul tilted his head at the baffling conclusion, then picked up his spoon.
Well, if it’s not a thing here, that works out fine for me.
He was already uneasy enough about imposing on Gyo-eon. Unlike before, when he hadn’t been particularly careful with his words or behavior around him, he’d been feeling like he needed to watch himself a little more.
So he’d gone out of his way to bring up the courtesy of elders as a kind of consideration — and Gyo-eon had turned it down. He couldn’t very well force formality on someone who didn’t want it.
“……Fine. Enjoy your meal.”
Hae-yul nodded, accepted Gyo-eon’s request, and began his meal by scooping up some broth.
The meal started in a quiet atmosphere — and then quickly became lively. Hae-yul had been chewing on Gyo-eon’s disastrous rolled omelette when he suddenly burst out laughing. At that, Gyo-eon’s chopsticks, which had been heading toward the spinach namul, faltered.
“Maybe I should take the rolled omelette away.”
“What? Why? I didn’t laugh because it tasted bad.”
Hae-yul looked at Gyo-eon in bewilderment, then explained with a small exclamation.
“Ah. It’s just — the more I think about it, the funnier it is that you quietly made a rolled omelette all by yourself. It doesn’t quite match your image somehow.”
“Then what do you think suits me, in Ju Hae-yul’s opinion?”
“Hmm……”
At Gyo-eon’s gaze, which seemed somehow expectant, Hae-yul put down his chopsticks and gave it genuine thought. There were actually quite a few things that came to mind. The only question was whether he could say them as they were or not.
After a brief moment of consideration, he’d narrowed it down to a few without much difficulty, and Hae-yul’s mouth opened.
“A perfectly pressed suit without a single crease, an extremely expensive watch, a refrigerator stocked full of mineral water, whiskey lined up on one side, and a house decorated in black.”
Most of it was things Hae-jeong had told him. Hae-jeong had gone on rattling off strange things, mentioning some mineral water brand as if naming off the requirements for a proper gwang-gong. At the time he’d just laughed at the absurdity of it — but applying it to Gyo-eon, it fit surprisingly well.
But the expression on Gyo-eon’s face when he heard the answer was peculiar.
“……Do you genuinely think those things suit me, Ju Hae-yul?”
“Yes. Why? Don’t you like it?”
Of course it was a stretch to call it purely his own opinion — but since he agreed with a fair portion of it himself, it hardly mattered.
“It’s not that I dislike it, it’s more that…… I can’t help but feel that in Ju Hae-yul’s eyes, I look something like an inhuman person.”
As that was actually what he thought to some extent, Hae-yul didn’t deny it — he simply blinked quietly.
“……I understand what Ju Hae-yul thinks. Let’s finish eating.”
Gyo-eon replied in a flat tone and moved his chopsticks first. He looked oddly sulky — or was that just Hae-yul’s imagination? Hae-yul picked up his spoon again and stole a glance at Gyo-eon’s expression for no good reason.
After the meal, once Hae-yul had finished helping Gyo-eon clear the table, he brought up the topic he’d been putting off.
“I quit my part-time jobs. Partly because of what you said, and also because I think finding a new place to stay is going to take a fair amount of time.”
Taking a two-week break from part-time work wasn’t going to put him in immediate difficulty — his wallet wasn’t quite that thin. And he had a separate sum he’d set aside for situations like this.
“Which is why I wanted to say——”
Hae-yul had been thinking throughout dinner about how to repay Gyo-eon. The idea of continuing to receive help without giving anything back didn’t sit well with him.
“I feel like I’ve just been keeping my mouth shut while receiving all this help from you. How about accepting a little bit of living expenses from me?”
At that, Gyo-eon’s eyebrows, which had been listening calmly, gave a subtle lift.
“I know it won’t be much……”
“Ju Hae-yul keeps trying to repay things with money even when there’s nothing to spare.”
“You don’t like that? You might think it’s a laughably small amount — but I thought it through before bringing it up.”
Hae-yul felt a flash of indignation at Gyo-eon’s sideways look. Whatever amount he offered, it would look like pocket change to Gyo-eon. Even so, the idea of staying in a place this expensive without paying anything back felt wrong. He had a feeling it would sit uncomfortably with him throughout his stay.
That was why he’d planned to chip away at it little by little in the form of living expenses. And besides — no matter how large and expensive the apartment, wouldn’t two or three hundred thousand won be sufficient? Above all, he had no intention of staying here long.
“If anything, this is good timing. I’ll make it clear before it goes any further — I have no intention of accepting money from Ju Hae-yul.”
“No, why not? Is it too small an amount for you? Have you ever heard the expression ‘even dust piles up to form a mountain’?”
“No. Regardless of the amount, I simply don’t want money to be how Ju Hae-yul repays me.”
“Then what? Don’t tell me you’re going to make another strange request like last time?”
Hae-yul clearly remembered the moment Gyo-eon had told him, in lieu of compensation, that he wanted to meet a few times. He couldn’t just stand back and watch him make another absurd proposal like that.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever asked anything strange of Ju Hae-yul — am I misremembering?”
Hae-yul’s eyes sharpened toward Gyo-eon, who was putting on an innocent face as if he knew nothing.
“At any rate — living expenses, no. What you’d give me wouldn’t make a meaningful difference to my finances, and on top of that, I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on Ju Hae-yul, who is still a student.”
There was more than one thing that rubbed him the wrong way, but Hae-yul swallowed the words rising in his throat. Getting worked up right now would do him no good. And Gyo-eon’s words weren’t wrong, either.
“Just make yourself comfortable. I didn’t bring Ju Hae-yul into my home expecting something in return. Having you here doesn’t put me out in any significant way.”
“I’m uncomfortable. I keep accumulating debts to you.”
Gyo-eon furrowed his brow at Hae-yul’s earnest words, then answered in a voice mixed with a sigh.
“Yes. I hear what Ju Hae-yul is saying. Then let’s do it this way.”
It finally felt like they were starting to get through to each other. Hae-yul waited calmly for what would follow.
“To be honest, living alone in a house this big has been lonely. Even in Ju Hae-yul’s eyes, this isn’t exactly a cozy place, is it?”
“Well, that’s……”
Is he bragging about how big his house is right now? Hae-yul listened to Gyo-eon with a slightly crooked eye. Frankly, no matter what Gyo-eon proposed, he doubted he’d like it. The track record so far was nothing short of spectacular.
“And in the middle of that, I came to be living with Ju Hae-yul. It’s only been two days, but I’ve enjoyed sharing meals and talking with you. This place felt, for the first time, like an actual home.”
The preamble was unusually long for Gyo-eon. Which was unnerving.
“So — let’s keep sharing meals and talking, going forward. Just until Ju Hae-yul finds a suitable place to move into. That’s the repayment I’m asking of you.”
Hae-yul blinked blankly at Gyo-eon’s words. The request was more reasonable than he’d expected. Hae-yul was genuinely considering it on fairly positive terms — when Gyo-eon suddenly tacked on something strange.
“If that’s too difficult, I’ll have no choice but to go with Ju Hae-yul’s suggestion instead. In that case, taking your feelings of discomfort into account, I was thinking of accepting five hundred as living expenses — would that be alright?”
“F— f— five hundred?”
“Yes. Five hundred a month. Anything less, and I’m not sure Ju Hae-yul’s discomfort would be fully resolved.”
……Five hundred as living expenses? And monthly, at that?
Hae-yul’s eyes went into a spin. He knew full well that Gyo-eon was pulling the same crafty trick as before — and yet five million won was an amount that made his heart drop. It was an expensive house in an expensive neighborhood, so from Gyo-eon’s perspective five million won was probably even on the low end — but……
With the deposit and monthly rent for his next place, plus living expenses to think about, he was in a position where he couldn’t afford to throw away a hundred won carelessly — and he was supposed to fork out five million a month? He’d been naive to think two or three hundred thousand would cover it. No — he’d been an idiot.
